Page 86 of Mountain Wood

I have no idea why.

He would have loved Grace. Bet she would have made him smile the same way that picture of my grandmother did.“There’s something about a woman that touches a man’s heart,”he’d said to me just after I had my first break up.“It’s forever changed by it. There’s no going back to being who you were before that one woman comes into your life.”

I never understood what he meant. My first girlfriend broke my heart, and the pain didn’t last. I didn’t care enough. I wasn’t changed by her. Nor by the next one. Or the one after that.

But Grace?

She’s changed me, except I can’t figure out how I’m different. It’s just a gut feeling. One that knows I’ll never recover if I lose her… just like I’ll love her forever, no matter what.

She’s my heart’shome.

And she’s making the mountain feel like one again too.

How’s that possible?

“Oh. Em. Gee.” Grace turns off the vacuum cleaner and snags a photo that was lying flat on the mantel, out of view. “Look at you!” She turns the frame over for me to see and holds it to her chest. “You’re adorable.”

I’m holding a fish that’s nearly half my size with a cheesy grin on my face. “I was a scrawny kid.”

“You look like a happy kid.” She delicately props the photo up on the mantel and my stomachdrops. I hurry over and lay it back down, out of sight again.

“Why don’t you want it up?”

I’m not sure how to answer her. Why don’t I want it up? Why don’t I want to see it? Why does my stomach hurt having it on display just like it always was when he… “It reminds me of a different time that I can’t get back.”

Her brow pinches with pity. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, sugar.” I slowly tilt the picture just enough to glance at it one last time. “Grief is weird, I guess. I took a lot of photos down when he died. Seeing them up surrounded me with emotions I couldn’t get a handle on.”

She presses her hand on my chest, right over my heart. “I wish I could have met him.”

“I was just thinking about how much he would have loved you.” I chuckle and shake my head. “You would have had him showing off his skills like a lovesick fool.”

“And what skills would those be?”

“He could Yo-Yo.”

Grace’s laugh shoots fireworks into me. “Yo-Yo?”

“He was crazy good at it.” My heart skips around my chest. “When families filled the cabins in the summer, he would usually have a big bonfire in the center for everyone and would bust out his Yo-Yo and do all kinds of tricks with it. He could time it to any song you played, too. It was hilarious.” I want to cry just thinking about it, even though I have a dumb smile on my face. “And he was scary good at axe throwing.”

“Oh!” Grace looks genuinely thrilled by that.

“He never missed the mark.” My eyes sting. “He… made animal pancakes, too. Whatever you wanted, he could make it.” Shit, I think my eyes are leaking. “He had a way of making you feel so loved and safe. In a world where no one wanted you… where no one else understood you… he did. And now he’s gone.”

Grace’s arms wrap around me like an anaconda, and I can’t believe I’m crying over a man that’s been gone for over two years. Is it because I never accepted my grief? Never wanted to feel it? Why the fuck is it hitting me now? I’d shoved my pain down, just like I laid that photo of the first time he took me fishing down on the mantel, and never acknowledged it.

It seems impossible to ignore anymore.

“I’ve let this place go.” My chest is going to cave in. “He would be so disappointed in me.”

“Don’t say that,” she says against my chest. “You didn’t let this place go. It got away from you. Bet there were times when it got away from him too.”

No. There weren’t. Even when an eight-year-old terrorizer showed up on his porch with a suitcase and bad attitude, he kept this place running like a tight ship because it supported us for a long time.

“He was sick for longer than I knew.” I say quietly. A bubble of anger floats to the surface. “He hid it from me until he couldn’t anymore. By then… everything was slowly falling apart. The cabins, the bridge, the employees’ responsibilities. The last two years of his life were brutal. He needed twenty-four-hour care and a boatload of meds. I couldn’t run the cabins and be with him at the same time, and I couldn’t afford to hire help for either one, so I sacrificed the land and spent every day by his bedside. Bathing him. Feeding him. Reading to him.” The bubble of anger pops when it touches my heart. “Every day, he said he loved me. Even when his voice could no longer be heard. I knew… from the first day, to the last, that I was loved.”

A wave of nausea hits me. I think I’m going to throw up. All these emotions are choking me. Making me sway.

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